


Typhon's Gift

by Terrantalen



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Abuse, Blood and Gore, Canon Incest, Child Abuse, Everything Hurts, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Horror, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Incest, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Incest, Murder, Sibling Incest, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-08 14:18:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18624976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Terrantalen/pseuds/Terrantalen
Summary: Thomas Sharpe has never known love except from one person.Lucille Sharpe has never known love that does not also harm.Rated M for themes and violence, not explicit sexual content





	Typhon's Gift

**Author's Note:**

  * For [draculard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/gifts).



It was a distant memory. He remembered looking out on a fitful spring sky, hung with clouds of white and grey. He could see the sun, occasionally, burning like a bright, glowing coin as it passed through a diaphanous gap before it was hidden again. A smattering of rain dampened the window panes, started and stopped several times, before it rained in earnest. Lucille was reading aloud to their nanny, her voice hesitating over a word before she managed it.

Nanny would look over at him with an indulgent smile, watching him play with his toy soldiers. She had something in her hands, embroidery, or mending, Thomas couldn’t be sure which. He remembered feeling peaceful, perhaps even happy.

And then it had happened. There was a rumble that shook a book from the shelves and sent his soldiers tumbling onto the floor. He looked toward the door. He could hear the quick, staccato stride of his father in the hall.

Thomas stood and dashed out of the room. Nanny called after him, but he didn’t heed her.

He saw his father going outside, toward where he knew the men worked. Thomas liked visiting the men who mined the clay. He ran after his father, calling after him to wait. His father did not stop, did not so much as turn around to look at him.

Thomas was small, so small that his head was still below his father’s knee, so small that he still wobbled a little when he went down the front steps because they had been built for people so much bigger than he.

His father was a tall, imposing bearded man with flashing blue eyes and a hooked nose. He was striking rather than handsome, and strong rather than warm. Thomas had a vague notion that his father loved him, but then, he wasn’t so sure what love was and if the fact that his father tolerated his presence counted as love or not. He supposed it must. His nanny, after all, had said that _both_ his parents loved him, and if mother’s vicious castigation was love, father’s indifference must be too.

As Thomas ran behind his father, he became aware of another man limping toward them. He was speaking quickly, his words slurred by his accent and apparent agitation. Thomas couldn’t make out what he was saying, but his father seemed to.

“What do you mean?” Thomas Sharpe the elder asked.

Thomas wrapped his arms around his father’s leg and looked up at the other man. He looked down at Thomas. 

He was covered in dirty red clay, his normally smiling face uncommonly grave. Thomas knew this man, knew him to be jovial and friendly, the type of man who gave Thomas an apple if he had one to spare, the type of man who showed him the inside of his pocket watch and wound it up for Thomas so he could see all the little gears dancing their fascinating dance. His name was James, but he’d told Thomas to call him Jimmy.

He didn’t look like the same person. He met Thomas’ eye then looked back to his employer, “A collapse, sir. We lost thirty men at least, I don’t know how we’ll recover.”

“Thirty men?” there was barely a pause before Thomas’ father asked, “What about the equipment? Was that damaged too?”

Jimmy bowed his head, ran a hand across his face, leaving a streak of wet redness across it, “Lost, sir.”

There was a moment of stark silence. “Lost?” Thomas’s father asked. “Lost?”

He pushed Thomas off his leg. He didn’t seem to notice that Thomas fell on his rear in the dirt. “What do you mean, it was lost? All of it?”

Jimmy only nodded.

“Goddammit!” Thomas’ father yelled. There was more yelling, but Thomas was pelting away, sliding on the thick red clay as he ran back to the house, back to his nanny and his sister.

 

Thomas watched the snow falling outside. It was coming down thickly, the white just beginning to coat the earth. The clay was bleeding through. If it snowed enough, it would stay white until it started to melt, but it hardly ever snowed so heavily that the red wouldn’t seep up from the earth eventually.

In a snowstorm, the ground looked like the handkerchief of a man with tuberculosis. At least, that is how Thomas’ father had put it, and Thomas had made cook laugh by repeating the witticism to her, so he thought of it that way, though he did not know precisely why it was meant to look that way, nor what, exactly, tuberculosis was.

There was a gust of wind and Thomas heard the house give one of its great, terrible inhales. The sound always made Thomas’ skin crawl, doubly so, with the undercurrent of raised voices. His parents, fighting. 

Lucille was sitting at the door to the nursery, her head cocked slightly, listening intently.

“What are they saying?” Thomas asked.

Lucille shushed him. “I can’t hear.”

He went to her side and listened. Just murmurs, an occasional raised word. Lucille looked at him and then walked from the room.

Thomas tried to catch at her sleeve, it was safer for them to stay in the nursery, even if nurse was no longer there to protect them, but she shook him off. She walked toward the balcony, then suddenly fell flat on her stomach.

Father’s deep voice cut through the relative quiet easily, “I’ve told you, there isn’t any.”

He must have walked into the foyer.

Mother gave a reply, her voice a hiss that he couldn’t understand.

Thomas crept forward, laid down next to Lucille. He could hear a little more and realized soon enough that the fight was about money again. About how everything was falling apart, about how they needed to cut more staff.

“We can’t afford to pay her,” his father was saying.

“I’ll not cook meals in this house like a common fishwife,” Thomas’ mother snapped. “I will not be reduced so low.”

“We have to, Beatrice. We can’t afford...” his father was quieter. He’d followed Thomas’ mother into another room, out of the hallway.

Mother responded so quietly that he could barely make out the last of her words, “…father was right. You’ll drive me to ruin.”

“Then write to him. Appeal to him for access to your capital. We need it to get the mines running, Beatrice. We can’t survive like this.”

“Why would I let you have my money?”

“This is your home too. Think of the children, at least. Thomas will need an education. Lucille will need finishing. We need…”

“Don’t tell me what ‘we’ need!” Mother said, her voice raising. “I know what you really want money for, and it isn’t anything to do with me, or anyone but yourself.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Thomas shivered again, though this was due to the chill in his father’s voice and the absolute horror he felt at the malicious laughter that must have come from his mother. “You know precisely what I mean.”

“I’m sure I don’t.”

“But you do. Don’t be stupid. Little Clara down in the village,” Mother said, her voice full of venom, “The girls on the continent. I know it all. I know!”

There was a sound of shuffling, a growl coming from deep inside the throat of a man, “You know nothing!” Father yelled.

Lucille laid a hand on Thomas’ back and he looked over to her just as he heard the sound of a thunderous smack, the sound of a body hitting the floor. “You’re not a man! A man doesn’t need little girls!” their mother screamed.

Thomas’ heart was pounding in his chest.

Lucille took him by the hand, “Come,” she said.

She led him up to the nursery, pulled him up onto the bed. She held him against her and stroked his hair. He imagined she could still hear, just as well as he, the continued sounds of yelling, the cursing, the violence of hatred that was spewing out of their parents below, but Lucille wasn’t affected by it. She was singing, softly, the lullaby their nurse used to sing for them before she’d been let go.

“Forget everything but this, Thomas,” Lucille instructed. “Forget everything but the sound of my voice. Nothing can hurt you in this room. You’re safe here.”

She was so calm, so sure, that Thomas believed her.

 

Cook was gone the next day. After her went Fenton, their butler, and Mary, the maid, and all the rest, until there was no one to cook or clean, or make fires for them in the mornings. Then father left too, on one of his business trips, and it was just Lucille and Thomas, and Mother.

Mother carried the keys now, the keys their housekeeper used to wear, and she used them far more often. Rooms were locked, drawers were locked, places were forbidden to them. But not the nursery. That was their place, both their haven and their prison.

Thomas had been bad. At least, that’s what Mother had said. He was why she’d locked them in again, why Lucille was pounding at the door, raging, while he cried disconsolately in the corner.

“Mother! Mother!” Lucille shrieked, “Let us out!”

Thomas lodged himself tighter into the corner and hugged his knees to his chest. He hid his face in the crook of his arm so that Lucille would not see him crying. She hated to see him cry, especially when she was in a temper, especially when she had taken his beating for him yet again.

It was just that he’d been so hungry. He couldn’t help stealing one of the cakes from the parlor. 

They had been meant for his grandfather. He was meant to visit them, meant to deliver them some sort of salvation, at least that was what Lucille said. She’d read her mother’s letters, or rather, the discarded drafts of them, and she had told Thomas that Mother was planning to abandon them. She’d then added that it probably would be best for everyone if she did.

“Father would be home more if mother weren’t here,” Lucille had said.

Thomas wasn’t sure that was a good thing, but he didn’t voice that opinion.

Anyway, the cakes had been baked by a woman from the village, meant to be a special treat for their grandfather. He was supposed to arrive around supper, and Mother had been most severe about how neither he nor Lucille were to touch a one of them until he came, but mother hadn’t given them breakfast that morning, nor anything for lunch. 

The meal they were meant to eat when grandfather arrived went untouched, the soup slowly congealed, the side of beef turned hard and grey in the oven. The smell of the uncommon, rich foods had made his mouth water all day, and Thomas had been so hungry, so tired of waiting, as he watched the sun set in the summer sky.

Mother had been pacing from the parlor to the foyer for hours. Lucille was wearing her best pinafore, sitting behind the bench of the piano. She wasn’t playing, not anymore. Mother had wanted her to play for Grandfather when he came, and Lucille had practiced under her mother’s direction until she could play Mozart with her eyes closed. 

Thomas waited until Mother went out into the foyer again, looked quickly to see that Lucille wasn’t watching him, and then he’d reached for a cake. He thought he’d been quiet, thought that no one would see.

Mother had caught him by the wrist just as he was lifting it off the tray. Her eyes were glowing with rage, her face grim and dispassionate.

“What are you doing?” she spat. 

“I… I…” Thomas stammered.

“Are those for you?”

“Mamma, please…”

She wrenched his arm, her hand twisting painfully around his wrist, “Are those for you?”

“N-no.”

“You know the rules,” Mother said through clenched teeth. 

He did know the rules. Lucille knew them too.

“I made him,” she said, standing quickly. “I made him do it. It was for me, wasn’t it, Thomas? The cake?”

Thomas nodded, too terrified to do otherwise.

Instead of releasing him, their mother seized Lucille too, “Liar.”

She began dragging them both from the parlor, dragging them toward the stairs, toward the nursery. Lucille struggled, against her as their mother’s voice rose in a litany of the ways that they each disappointed her. “You disgust me, you little leech. You little worm. Stealing what doesn’t belong to you. Disobeying me, defying me! Trying to humiliate me in front of your grandfather, trying to embarrass me!”

“I’m sorry. Please, mother, please, I’m sorry,” Thomas pleaded.

Lucille’s eyes flashed, “What does it matter? He’s not here! He’s not coming! He’s done with you!”

Their mother stopped walking, stopped speaking. Her grip tightened.

“You’re the one he’s ashamed of,” Lucille taunted.

Beatrice Sharpe struck as quick as a snake. She shoved Thomas toward the stairs, sending him sprawling, the force of the impact knocking the breath from his lungs. 

She whipped Lucille around, so that she was facing her and delivered her a smack. The blow was so strong that Lucille's head rolled. Her legs shuffled against the floor, scraping ineffectually against the parquet as though she were on a sheet of ice, the only thing holding her upright was Mother's white-fisted grip on her arm.

She must have had a hundred canes and switches all over the house at this point. It was the only way to explain how she had one so readily to hand.

Thomas tried to crawl away, but he was immobilized with fear. He could only watch as his mother yanked Lucille onto her lap, could only stare at his sister’s vacant eyes, as Mother hiked up her skirt and pulled down her pantalettes.

The switch cut through the air with a throaty wheeze, landed with a serrated snap. 

She vented her frustration on her daughter, “You ruin everything,” she said from between clenched teeth. “Worthless, little, rat.”

The whip-crack of switch on bare flesh sounded, once, twice, a hundred times. Thomas didn’t really know, he didn’t count. He closed his eyes when he could no longer stand to look at Lucille, at the whites of her eyes rolling about in her head, at the red impression their mother’s ring had left on her cheek.

Mother slowed, her strikes grew further apart, and then she stopped. She stood and hauled Thomas up by his collar, seemingly without caring that it was choking him, “Monsters. Horrible, ungrateful, disgusting…” his mother said, almost to herself.

She dragged them up to the nursery, dropped Lucille so that she could open the door, then threw her inside. She pushed Thomas in next and he stumbled over his sister’s body and fell on top of her.

He looked up at his mother just before she closed the door. There was no trace of rage or anger, no trace of any emotion at all, only a horrible blankness. It was like she had nothing at all inside her. Like she was filled with a void instead of a soul, like there was an empty pit where her heart should have been.

She shut the door and turned the key.

They were locked in.

When she’d woken, Lucille had not been herself. She had slurred her speech, had stumbled as she stood, and then had come the rage. 

She didn’t hurt Thomas, not on purpose at least, but the things she threw and smashed against the walls and floor were not so carefully aimed that they did not strike him once or twice. The blindness of her anger prevented her from noticing when she snapped one of his soldiers in half under her shoe. 

She pounded against the door until her fists were purple, shouted until her voice was gone. She was exhausted. She fell to her knees, her head cradled against the door. Her lips still formed words, even if there was no sound to accompany them.

Thomas unrolled himself from the corner and went to her. She let him help her to her feet, allowed herself to be guided to the bed. He laid her down and pulled the covers over her. He settled himself beside her and held her as she cried.

 

The first time they’d been locked in the attic for more than a day and a night, they hadn’t been prepared. Thomas’ tongue had been thick and dry when Mother finally came upstairs with a pitcher of water and a crust of burnt bread for each of them.

She’d swayed against the wall while she watched them eat, then said, “Come out… you can come out…” and then staggered away, leaving the door unlocked.

Now, whenever they weren’t locked in, Lucille stole them as much food as she could from the kitchen. Sometimes, they found themselves locked in for days. If Lucille didn’t stockpile food for them, they would starve. There was a pitcher of water, always, under the bed. It could be refilled if they were locked in when it rained or snowed.

Presently, the pitcher was perched on their windowsill, a cold drizzle tricking into it. They had been locked in for three days.

Their food was beginning to run low.

“I’m hungry,” Thomas said softly.

“I imagine so,” Lucille said, “but we have to be careful. We don’t know when she’ll open the door again.”

Thomas looked over at her. She was sitting at the little desk with a book of songs. Lucille loved to play, loved to sing, but their mother had forbidden her the piano. She used to play herself but had grown to hate the noise. There was no music in their house now.

His mother had been suffering the most wretched headaches as of late and had no patience for any excess noise. It seemed that all her children were to her was excess noise, which was why, Thomas supposed, they were locked in the nursery again.

Thomas sighed, “I’m bored.”

Lucille arched an eyebrow at him, “Well, why don’t you make me something?”

“I’m out of wood.”

“Then read a book.”

“I’ve read all these books,” Thomas complained.

Lucille looked down at her music again, “We shall have to steal different ones when she opens the door next time.” She was silent, her fingers tapping against the surface of the desk like it was the keys of the piano as her eyes ran across the page.

“Could we play a game?” Thomas asked her.

“I don’t want to play a silly game,” Lucille said.

She was ten now and kept telling Thomas that she was too old to play baby games anymore.

“We can play anything you like,” Thomas said beseechingly. “Please, Lucille?”

Lucille pursed her lips. Her fingers stilled. She flipped the book closed. Her eyes were like the eyes of a doll, a perfect, little doll, like the ones Father used to bring her when he came home. Not like the ones that he brought for her now, when he brought her anything at all. She smiled. “We’ll play like I am mommy and you are daddy,” Lucille said.

Thomas reflexively recoiled from her, “No, I don’t like that.”

“Why not?”

“Because... because...”

Lucille knelt down in front of him, “We won’t play like we’re _our_ mommy and daddy. We’ll play like a nice mommy and daddy.”

“Nice?”

“Yes,” she said, tucking some of his hair behind his ear, “I’ll love you and you’ll love me, like mommies and daddies should.”

She went to stand but Thomas grasped her arms, “You’ll be nice?”

Lucille smiled softly, “So nice.” She caressed his face gently, “I’ll tell you how handsome you are and you can tell me how pretty I am, and we’ll be like how you’re supposed to, when you’re married. What do you think?”

Thomas nodded, “Alright.”

Lucille smiled again. “It’s just us two, Thomas. Just us two, and no one else.”

Thomas wasn’t sure if this was part of the game yet, so he said, “Just us two, together.”

“Always together,” Lucille said. She had her hand above his heart.

“Always together.”

She glanced down and then back up, “Never apart.”

“Never apart,” he echoed.

 

Father was home. When he was home, the nursery wasn’t locked. He was always very angry when he came home and found them locked within. Lucille said that it was because he could tell mother hadn’t been doing what she was supposed to and feeding them or bringing them water. Last time, they’d been locked in for nearly a week, and when the door had opened, and it had been their father to find them and not their mother, Lucille had said that she didn’t think Mother would have come back for them at all.

She didn’t love them, Lucille said.

Thomas believed her.

Their father and mother had fought, of course, a great, terrible row that had ended with their mother slung over their father’s shoulder, her body limp, before he threw her in her room and locked her there. “Now,” he’d said to Lucille, “We’ll see how she likes it,” and he’d chucked her chin with his finger. Lucille had beamed at him.

It had been days now and his mother was still in her room. She sobbed and whined at intervals for something that she didn’t have. She kept asking for someone to bring it to her, whatever it was.

Lucille had said that what their mother wanted only made her sick, but Thomas wasn’t sure. She seemed sicker now without it than she could possibly be if she had it. Her sobs were punctuated by retching, and the stink of vomit was still thick near her door.

Thomas wanted to rush past it like he usually did, but he couldn’t. Mother had gone quiet.

He knew he shouldn’t worry about her, of course. Lucille had told him often enough that he shouldn’t. Mother certainly didn’t bother to worry about them when he and Lucille were locked in their nursery, but he hesitated. There was some part of him that still hoped, that still cared, even if it was stupid. Even if it was weak. 

He went to the railing and looked down at the foyer.

Lucille had been playing most of the afternoon, but her music had stopped. Still, he could neither see nor hear any moment below. Likely, Lucille was with father, and if they were together, no one would know if he looked in on mother for just a moment.

Thomas crept to her door as quietly as he could. He pressed his face against the door and peeked in through the keyhole like Lucille had shown him. Mother was there, half in and half out of her bed, her head near the floor. “I need it, I need it… give me…” she was whispering. Then she choked out a sob and screamed, “I hate you!” at the top of her lungs.

He scooted back from the door and leapt to his feet, ready to run, before he realized that she could not have seen him, could not have known he was there.

She was alive. His curiosity satisfied, he had no more desire to linger outside her door.

The house was groaning. Everything was damp and wet. Spring had come and the hills ran red with the blood of the earth as it thawed. Father had told them that he’d secured some new device that was going to put the mines into production again, that he was going to get them a governess and Thomas a special tutor, and that things were going to be right again.

Lucille’s eyes had shone when she heard her father’s promises, but Thomas didn’t share her faith in him.

Whenever he looked at his father, he saw another image transposed over him: the image of him with his mother slung over his shoulder. Her arms had bounced limply against the backs of his thighs like the long, white necks of the dead geese that their mother made Lucille slaughter. No matter how fine his father’s promises were, Thomas could not shake his lingering fear of him.

Thomas went down to the parlor where he supposed his father and Lucille must be. He looked around the room and saw neither his father nor Lucille at first, not until he looked back toward the mullioned windows of the reading nook. Lucille was sitting on their father’s lap, their father was showing her something in a book, and Lucille’s lips were parted in a little ‘o’ of surprise.

Their father smiled down at her, “See, my darling? Secrets, everywhere.”

The east wind howled and the fire flared.

 

There was no new device that put the mines into production again. There was only father in his new tailored suits, his gold rings, his waxed moustaches and neatly trimmed beard.

He’d finally let mother out of her room. She looked twenty years older than she had before she’d been locked in. Thin, withered, almost, like an apple left to rot in the sun.

She was standing at the stove, cooking for them, her face drawn in a cruel rictus of hate as Father laughed at something Lucille said. She sat to Father’s left. He was looking at her adoringly. There might not have been anyone else in the room, so far as Father was concerned. It was like no one else existed.

It wouldn’t have bothered Thomas so much if it didn’t seem that Lucille was beginning to share the sentiment.

Their father would go away again soon. Thomas knew that he would, because he always did, but he had stayed home longer this time than he ever had before. Thomas didn’t like it.

He had read in books about how people had friends or relatives who would come and stay, and perhaps, if Thomas had a friend, or even a cousin, or _someone_ , he would not have noticed so acutely how Lucille had abandoned him.

But there was no one else and Thomas could not stop feeling the sting of her rejection. For so many years, it had only been the two of them, united.

Father was divisive. Father was the problem. He was always taking Lucille away at night when he thought Thomas was asleep. He had done when they were younger too, but now it was nearly every night, and Lucille never told Thomas what they did. Lucille always told him everything.

What could be secret between the two of them?

Thomas hated it.

“Don’t you think, Beatrice,” Father said, “That Lucille is turning out quite pretty?”

Mother turned slowly, “She’s turning out a hussy, you mean.”

There was a moment of silence, the whole room collectively in shock, and then Father shot up from where he sat, the screech of his chair enough to send Thomas diving under the table. He shut his eyes.

Thomas could hear the clap of Father’s hands against Mother’s wrists, could hear how he wrenched her across the floor, the hiss Mother made as he threw her to her knees at Lucille’s feet.

“Apologize,” he commanded.

There was a long stretch of silence where Thomas heard nothing but breathing. Curiosity got the better of him. He had to look. Father was standing behind Mother. Her dark dress was pooled around her knees. He was gripping her shoulder with a white-knuckled intensity.

“Apologize,” he said again, shaking her.

Then, it went fast. Mother lunged for something on the table. She dove toward Lucille. Lucille gave a shriek, and then Father groaned as something hit him with a wet thwack. Thomas saw red dribbling onto the floor and for a mad second, thought it was only clay, but then realized that it was blood.

Mother scrambled back from Father as he reeled. “Whore! Whore!” she shouted at Lucille. She looked up, her eyes aflame with hatred, “Pervert!”

“Bitch,” Father growled. He pulled the knife from his side, the blade slick with red and he tossed it to the floor. He covered the distance to their mother in three quick strides. His hand was large enough to engulf her entire face before he took it and slammed it against the stone floor. Teeth rattled out of her mouth, more blood, more screams. Thomas watched her fingers struggling weakly against the stone, watched their father’s boot as he raised his leg and then stomped down.

Thomas shook his head, closed his eyes, covered his ears, tried to block out the percussive sound of his father systematically breaking his mother’s leg.

She moaned, too disoriented to fight, until Thomas heard a sickeningly loud crack and then there was silence. Their father was panting. He tugged at his coat and walked out of the room without a word.

Lucille was sitting with her hand to her face, blood leaking from between her fingers.

“Lucille,” Thomas said, finally crawling from beneath the table, “Lucille, you’re hurt.”

He touched her face.

“Get away from me!” she shouted. She shoved him to the floor and then ran.

 

The slash across Lucille’s face had mostly healed by the time their father announced his intention to leave again.

Mother was confined to her bed. The doctor had said nothing when Father had told him dispassionately that she had fallen down the stairs, nor when he’d leaned in confidentially and whispered a single word, “Laudanum.”

The man had only nodded. He’d given Mother something that had kept her still and quiet, something that stopped her from noticing that she was locked in her room again.

The money for a nurse could not be spared, so Lucille had the indignity of being forced to care for her. That seemed to be the only time Mother would come around. Whenever Lucille went in with her porridge and tea, their mother would hiss abuse at her, would even take weak swipes at her face to try and hit her.

She’d connected once and reopened Lucille’s wound, but Lucille had only laughed at her. It was plain that they hated one another.

Thomas would have helped nurse her, but no one seemed to even think of him anymore. So, he spent every available moment in his little workshop. He’d collected all of the pieces of broken clockwork he could from all over the house and began pulling it apart.

Clockwork was quiet and order, and things moving exactly as they should. It wasn’t anything messy or organic, and if it broke you could fix it, and if it could not be fixed, the pieces could still be used to make something else. Usually, something even better.

Thomas heard the jangle of keys coming down the hall. His whole body went tense and he threw a cloth over what he was working on before he remembered that Lucille carried the keys now. She came in, her body encased in a rich, red velvet dress that father had bought her with whatever money they did have as a going away present.

There was a gentle sway to her hips now, when she moved. She had always been so much more adult than he, now even more so, when the burden of responsibility was placed upon her. He could hardly believe that it was only two years that separated them.

“Father is leaving.”

“Now?” Thomas asked.

“Yes. He’s waiting for the carriage in the hall if you want to say goodbye.”

The scab near her lip pulled it up. She caught Thomas staring at it, “Hideous, isn’t it?”

“What? No,” Thomas said.

“Father thinks it is.” Thomas blinked, wondered if his father had actually said that, but then Lucille said, “He doesn’t like me anymore.”

“Then he’s stupid.”

Lucille’s lip quirked in one of her rare smiles. “What are you making?” she asked him.

“Oh, just an automaton.”

“Does it work?”

Thomas smiled, “It’s beginning to.” He felt suddenly shy, “I was making it for you. To cheer you up.”

Lucille laid a hand on his face, “My brother,” she said softly. “We haven’t played a game in a long time. Perhaps we could play tonight? After mother is asleep?”

“I’d like that.”

“Good.” She took his hand in hers, “Come, let’s say goodbye to Father.”

The whole house was creaking as they walked downstairs together. The roof had taken to leaking in the foyer and a pool of water collected just under the peak. The parquet there was already beginning to rot. Father was standing next to his trunk, near the door. He turned when he heard them come down the stairs.

“Lucille,” he said. He strode into the center of the room, knelt and held out his arms.

She walked to him hesitantly, let him embrace her. His eyes drifted closed while he held her. He leaned away from her and placed a delicate kiss upon her lips, “It won’t be for long, my dear. I’ll be back soon, and things,” he said looking around them, “will be different. I promise.”

Lucille nodded. He released her and she went to stand once more next to Thomas at the base of the stairs. She took his hand.

The wind howled and the house groaned. Their father struggled up to his knees, clutching at his side where he had been stabbed. He was looking at Thomas as though he was going to say something when there was a sound like the crack of bone, like a tree breaking under the weight of too much snow. Father looked up, and then he was gone.

There was a pile of rotten wood and slate where he used to be.

Lucille screamed.

 

There was no money to fix the hole in the roof. That’s what the solicitor had said. He and Thomas had gone over the accounts while Thomas’ mother stared at them blearily from her wheelchair. She was drooling a little and Lucille wiped at her mouth with a handkerchief occasionally. 

The solicitor had seemed a sympathetic enough sort. He had given advice and Thomas had nodded his small, dark head, feeling lost. He wished that everyone would just talk to Lucille. She knew what was going on, he didn’t.

In spite of the fact that she was two years older, the solicitor, the debt collectors, the men from the depot, and everyone else who came to the house didn’t ask for Lady Lucille or even Lady Beatrice, they asked for Sir Thomas Sharpe. And that was him, now Father was dead.

The good news was that, in spite of his years without a formal education, Thomas had a good head for figures, so he understood, at least, the numbers that the solicitor was giving him. The bad news was that the numbers were all worrisomely inadequate and he had no idea what to do about it.

Workmen had come after the roof had fallen in and begun repairs before the solicitor came. It seemed that the repairs would have to stop where they were. There was no money for them.

The clothes that their father had come home in, the dresses he’d bought for Lucille, all of them had been purchased through credit and loans. There was no money for anything, not even their mother’s doctor.

They had made one final payment to him, gotten the last of the medicine that she required, and now it was a waiting game. She’d be back to her old self soon.

Thomas had felt relieved when the doctor had said that she’d never walk correctly again, hoped that it would mean that she wouldn’t be as fast or as strong as she used to be either. He’d not said it, of course, but the look of fierce joy on Lucille’s face had probably spoken loudly enough.

“It might behoove to you consider selling the land,” the solicitor said. “It would be possible for you to get a more modest, but still very comfortable situation for yourselves.”

Thomas was about to ask how much they might get for the land when Lucille said, “No. That is out of the question.”

The solicitor looked at her in shock. It might have been a kitten who had spoken to him so.

“The land is all that we have left of our father,” Lucille said.

Thomas swallowed, “If it were made to produce again,” he said, his own voice sounding high and small in his ears, “If that were possible, mightn’t we be able to save everything?”

The solicitor shrugged, “I suppose. But you’d need some great innovation to come along to get the mines producing again. Why, the ground is so unstable, Allerdale Hall is sinking into the ground.”

“But, if we want to stay… how can we make that happen?” Thomas asked without knowing exactly what they were staying for.

The solicitor sighed, “Well, let’s take a look.”

 

The house was always cold, always dark. It sighed and shuddered around them like a dying animal, a dying animal that they were trapped inside of. 

Through economizing and luck, they had been able to stay, but barely. Everything they had was second hand, everything slowly falling apart around them.

When he was small, Thomas had once pulled back a pile of dead leaves away from the trunk of a tree and seen the army of crawling insects that scurried out of the light and back into the dank, rotting darkness. That was how he felt. Like he was a crawling, filthy insect that couldn’t find its way somewhere better because it was only suited to the dark.

He hadn’t seen mother in days. She was Lucille’s charge, still.

Her, and so much else. Lucille cooked, cleaned, took care of mother, and him, and only asked that Thomas do his job, which was to work in his shop.

He had to come up with a design for something that could make the mines run again. He’d read every book of engineering they had in the library and had sold off some of their paintings so that he could buy more books.

Lucille hated to see their things sold away, but she knew, as Thomas did, that it needed to be done. If he could figure out how to make something that could get the mines running again, they would be saved, himself and his sister.

Otherwise…

There could be no otherwise. Lucille had made that perfectly clear.

Thomas’ eyes were aching. It was late. The attic was cold and dark. He stood and carried the single candle with him, lighting his way as he walked downstairs.

He could hear Lucille playing, her fingers dancing skillfully across the keys. It was beautiful, her music. It was the only beauty that could be found in this horrible place.

He was surprised that their mother wasn’t yelling about it, but she’d been unusually quiet and sullen lately. It was possible that she had finally given up her anger at them, or, at least, that it had cooled into something new.

He walked past her room. Not even the light of a candle crept from under the door. Lucille had taken to keeping her in darkness at all times, now, and their mother was growing weaker and weaker, no longer able to resist her daughter as she once had.

That was because Lucille kept her on the brink of starvation.

She had to. Beatrice Sharpe had brought them both to the edge of death so many times that it seemed unwise to make sure she became entirely healthy again.

Thomas didn’t like it, of course, but there was not much that Thomas did like.

Lucille had excellent hearing. She turned to him as he entered the parlor, “How is work, Thomas?”

“I’m trying. I think… I may have a design. I think I’m getting close.”

“Well, stop trying and please _do_ something Thomas. You can’t have failed to observe that things are getting desperate.”

“No, I—"

“I’ve had to cut mother’s rations again.”

“Again?”

“Yes. To economize. And because she did this,” she turned to face him and pulled her hair away from her neck. There were terrible, purpled handprints on the sides of Lucille’s throat.

Thomas winced, “When did she do that?”

“Last night. She still hates me. For father…” Lucille said, her eyes going far away.

Thomas looked up toward the reading nook, “Do you remember…?” he began, but stopped.

“Remember what?”

Thomas shook his head, “Oh, nothing. I… just, remember when he came home? That last time? I saw the pair of you once, and he was showing you something, up there. A book.”

Lucille smiled. The cuts on her face had healed, but they’d scarred. Her beauty would never be unmarred, but she was still striking, still very lovely, particularly in her dressing gown, with her dark hair around her shoulders.

“He was showing me how to play.”

She didn’t elaborate.

Thomas chewed at the corner of his lip and didn’t ask her to.

Lucille started playing his lullaby on the piano, “Do you remember when we used to play the mommy and daddy game?”

Thomas felt himself flush. He remembered. They hadn’t done, not since before father had died, but he still remembered. “Yes.”

“Do you ever miss it, Thomas?” she asked. “Kissing me, like you used to?”

“I…”

“I miss it,” Lucille said softly. “You have the softest lips, the softest little hands.”

“We’re not supposed to.”

He knew that now, though he hadn’t known it then.

Lucille huffed a little laugh, “We’ve spent our whole lives doing what we are not supposed to. Look at me, here, Thomas. Playing this piano. Mother always said she didn’t want me to, that I’d put it out of tune, that I’d wreck it. But here I am, playing. Doesn’t it make you happy?”

He didn’t know if she was asking him about her playing or about kissing her. He said nothing.

“Answer me, Thomas. It makes you happy?”

Thomas nodded. “Yes.”

“Come sit by me.”

He went to her, sat next to her on the bench. Her hands stilled. She turned to him slightly, put her hand on his thigh and looked at his face. Slowly, the pressure of her hand increased on his thigh until she was gripping the muscle so tight that it stung.

Thomas hissed, he squirmed, “That hurts.”

“There is no joy without pain, Thomas. No love without hate. That’s what Father taught me, so that I could teach you.” She squeezed him harder and Thomas gasped, “Do you love me?”

“Yes, Lucille. I love you.”

She loosened her hold on him. “Love hurts and it heals, Thomas. Tell me, like you used to.”

She was still bigger than him, so he looked up at her as he said, “You’re very pretty.”

“You’re very handsome,” she said quietly. She touched his face, caressed his cheek and rested her hand on his neck. “Now kiss me.”

Thomas swallowed. He leaned forward and placed a chaste kiss upon her mouth. He gasped, shocked, when he felt his sister’s tongue pressing against his lips. He lurched away from her, “Lucille!”

She grabbed the back of his head and crushed his mouth to hers. Thomas wondered when she had gotten so strong, because he could not fight her, had to let her do as she wanted to him. He raised his arms to shove at her, but his strikes were ineffectual. He yielded to her.

At last, she pulled away. Thomas was trembling in fear, in shame, in something else that he did not understand. She glanced down toward his trousers and smiled knowingly, “You liked it.”

“Lucille!” cried a voice from upstairs, “Lucille!”

“Now what does she want?” Lucille asked irritably. She leaned forward and kissed Thomas again, and then got up, “I’m going to go take care of mother. I’ll be back.”

Thomas had not often had cause to be thankful for Beatrice Sharpe, but he was glad of her then. He looked up at her portrait on the wall and shivered.

 

Lucille was tugging Thomas by the hand into their mother’s room. Their mother was in the bath, Thomas could hear the sound of her slowly disturbing the water as she washed herself.

“What are we doing, Lucille?” Thomas asked in a whisper.

“Playing,” she whispered back.

Thomas winced, “Now?”

“Yes, now. Come up on the bed with me.”

“What if she sees?”

“If she sees, I’ll protect you. Like I always have.”

Thomas crawled up on the bed with his sister. The bathroom door was slightly ajar. He saw the motion of his mother’s arm in the water.

There was a butcher knife at the foot of the bed. Thomas’ eyes fixed upon it.

“Lucille—”

“Shh,” his sister said. She grabbed his hands, placed them upon her budding breasts. She was grinning, able to see the effect she was having on him.

He was disgusted by himself.

“Take off your shirt,” she said to him.

“Why?”

“Because I want you to. Do it.”

Thomas had gotten to the third button on his shirt when he heard his mother’s screech.

“What? What are you…” she said in shock.

Lucille looked at her viciously and then turned to Thomas and kissed him, her mouth open atop his, her tongue sliding past his lips. She kissed down his neck, pushed him back onto the bed while their mother watched in horror. He could see her eyes wide and round, staring at him through the gap between the door and the jamb while Lucille touched him.

“Whore! Monster! Monsters!” their mother shrieked.

Thomas didn’t know how to feel at all.

“Lucille, she’s watching,” he hissed, as though she could have failed to realize why their mother was shrieking at them, while she was flailing in her bath, soaking the tile floor.

“Do you want it to stop?”

“Yes,” he said emphatically. He wanted it all to stop.

Lucille pulled away from him. He saw her grab the huge, heavy knife from the foot of the bed. There was something animal, fell, and terrible about his sister as she stalked into the bathroom.

Thomas was frozen, unable to move or look away.

Lucille threw open the door so that Thomas could see perfectly the naked body of their mother. “Mother,” she said, her voice rough, “Thomas wants you to stop.”

“You’re both monsters!” his mother said frantically. She was trying to push herself out of the water, she couldn’t, she was too weak. Thomas could see that her body had wasted terribly. He hadn’t realized before.

“Stop, Mother,” Lucille said so softly that Thomas could barely hear her. Their mother was crying, whining, like she had when she’d been sick, her wordless wails terrible in Thomas’ ears.

“Stop!” Thomas shouted desperately.

Then Lucille lifted the knife and brought it down directly onto their mother’s skull.

A confetti of brains and blood exploded across the tile and slowly slid down the walls. 

Lucille turned to Thomas, blood covering her face in a thick spray. Their mother’s blood. “She won’t bother us anymore.”

“Lucille, what did you do?”

“I did what you wanted, Thomas. I stopped her.” She shrugged, “She was too expensive anyway.”

“Too…?” Thomas said, dumbfounded.

“She was, Thomas. She needed more food than we could give her. Now, it’s just you and me and it will be easier.”

Thomas could hardly comprehend the coldness in Lucille’s voice. It was like she’d fired one of the staff, or killed a chicken that had stopped laying eggs, or some other unpleasant but necessary task. He felt a strange giddy horror crawling up the back of his throat.

His sister, covered in blood.

His mother, dead behind her.

The room was distant. He was looking at everything from a thousand miles away. He was not there. He wasn’t the boy in his mother’s bed, holding on to her musty sheets, looking at her blood dripping off the blade of a butcher knife.

He wasn’t.

It couldn’t be real.

“Lucille, no. No, you can’t have… Why?”

“I’ve told you why. You wanted me to do it,” she said matter-of-factly.

“No,” he said, “I didn’t.”

Lucille bared her teeth at him, “You asked for this,” she gestured toward the corpse of their mother, slumped in the bath, red sliding down the front of her ruined face and into the water.

Thomas shook his head, “No. I didn’t mean—"

“Did you really want her alive anymore, Thomas? She’s done nothing but cost us money and make me work, for years now. She’s been bloody fucking useless. And she had money. Did you know? She had her dowry, still. She never fucking told us, Thomas! She never said a word or offered a penny, but I found it. I found the documents, from our solicitor and her will, and everything.”

Thomas shuddered. Lucille’s temper was rising.

“And you. What do you do? While I do everything, you try to come up with an idea and you can’t even do that. So, I did what I had to. Mother’s money will go to you and finally, you can do something _useful_.”

“Lucille,” Thomas began, placatingly.

“I’m tired, don’t you understand? When, Thomas, when do I get to have what I want? What I need? When?” She was angry, now. She swept a collection of little glass bottles off the shelf of the bathroom, sent them smashing to the floor.

She turned toward the mirror, saw her blood-soaked reflection in the glass and charged at it. She pulled the mirror over with a guttural yell and smashed it, her eyes wide with fury.

“I did this for you!” she screamed. She advanced toward him, the glass cutting into her bare feet. She left bloody footprints upon the carpet as she walked back to the bed, her eyes were mad, her expression twisted between rage and grief, and something else, too. Something wounded.

“Lucille,” Thomas said, softly, “I’m sorry.”

She stopped a foot from the bed, her clenched fists loosening slightly. “I did it for you,” she said, her voice now tender, the voice of the girl who’d once soothed him in their nursery. “I’ve done it all for you, Thomas.”

“I know, I know you have. I’m grateful, really, Lucille, I am,” he said, sliding from the bed.

“She can’t hurt us now, Thomas. Father should have taken care of her for us. I asked him to, but he didn’t. I had to, Thomas. She’ll never hurt us again. There will be money now. You understand.”

“I understand. I do.” He reached out for her hands, took them in his own. Their mother’s blood was still slick as it met Thomas’ skin, staining his fingers red.

“Don’t leave me,” she said.

“No, never.”

“Always together, never apart.”

“Yes,” he agreed.

“Say it,” she said, and it was there again, her forcefulness.

“Always together, never apart.”

She smiled, her eyes rimmed with unshed tears. It was terrible to see her cry. Thomas did the only thing he could think of to cheer her. He kissed her, the taste of their mother’s blood upon her lips.


End file.
